The Grains Council of Australia says the hysterical reaction by a vocal minority to the detection of an
insignificant level of genetically modified canola in a consignment is unjustified.

GCA President, Murray Jones, said the reaction from anti-GM groups was predictable, ill founded and
potentially damaging to Australia’s grain exports.

“There is no potential at all for this detection to impact on our export sales. At 0.01%, the presence of GM
canola is at the very edge of what can be measured. This is really a trace amount and we have full
confidence in the processes being put in place to investigate the source of the canola that has been
detected”.

“Calls for more regulation are political grandstanding, as there is no proof anywhere in the world that this
technology is harmful or risky to health or the environment. Demands by activists for admission of liability
and a recall of the product by Bayer Cropscience are ludicrous. The superseded Topas 19/2 product was
last grown in a trial in Australia in 1998 and has not been grown in trials in Australia since”, he said.

“There is no justification for additional regulation of agri-biotechnology. What we should be doing is reducing
the regulation and boosting the research. The Australian grains industry spends $6 million per year on
biotechnology research and taxpayers spend about $8 million a year on regulation”.

“The detected phosphinothricin acetyl transferase (PAT) gene has been approved by the Gene Technology
Regulator for commercial release in Australia and is approved for human consumption in the EU, USA,
Canada, China, Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan”, Mr Jones said.

“Anti technology activists engage in scare mongering, with empty threats that production of biotech plants in
Australia will lose export markets. Our major exporters have been in contact with their overseas customers
and have assured them the Australian situation is under control and there is no indication that our wheat and
barley exports will be impacted in any way”, he said.

“We sell cereals into the same markets as Canada, which has not lost any sales from its adoption of
biotechnology. While Canada lost some markets in the EU, it actually picked up new markets, including in
Japan, after it started producing biotech Canola”.

“We expect that Australia’s export grain customers are too sensible to be swayed by a minority group calling
for simplistic and unrealistic outcomes based on false information”.

“The concern we have as representatives of the majority of grain producers is that a vocal minority are
disadvantaging tens of thousands of grain producers in Australia who need new types of crops to better
manage their farms and address their declining terms of trade. GCA won’t permit a few stirrers to
disadvantage the majority”.